Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.

The Obama Administration Thursday unveiled a Big Data Research and Development Initiative that will see the six federal agencies and departments put $200 million or more into Big Data R&D.

These new commitments are supposed to improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data.

Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said, "In the same way that past federal investments in information technology R&D led to dramatic advances in supercomputing and the creation of the Internet, the initiative we are launching today promises to transform our ability to use Big Data for scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education and national security."…

Grazed from Philadelphia Business Journa.  Author:  Peter Key.

UXFlip won the Best in Show award for its presentation at the Phorum 2012 National Cloud Computing Conference on Wednesday.

The West Chester, Pa., company was one of 14 companies to present at the conference, which was put on by the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies at World Cafe Live in University City. The companies presented during the conference’s “Demo Pit” segment and the “Best in Show” winner was selected by audience vote.

UXFlip is developing a platform that allows mobile-app developers to manage their apps’ user interfaces from the cloud. The company was part of DreamIt Ventures’ last Philadelphia class and the description of it on DreamIt’s website is more illuminating than the company’s own website…

Grazed from Computer Technology Review.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Hexagrid, a developer of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing solutions, announced this week that Cobalt Solutions, a Las Vegas based data center solutions provider, has utilized Hexagrid’s cloud computing platform to launch a cloud-based Disaster Recovery (DR) solution that offers true business continuity.

Hexagrid and Cobalt developed this solution to augment Cobalt’s already extensive DR portfolio of solutions which combine to offer businesses a comprehensive opportunity to proceed with “business as usual” when disaster strikes…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

I’ve heard it all about private clouds over the last few years. "Private clouds are not true clouds," say the public cloud computing purists. "Private clouds are the best way to move toward cloud computing," say those who typically sell older technology in need of a quick cloud rebranding to become relevant.

The focus needs to be on the architecture and the right-fitting enabling technology, including both private and public cloud technology, and not gratuitous opinions. There should be no limits on the technology solution patterns you can apply. If that means private, public, or a mix of both, that’s fine as long as you do your requirements homework and can validate that you have chosen the right solution…

Grazed from Peninsula Press.  Author: Liu He.

Palo Alto-based VMware, a market leader in virtualization technology, is shifting strategic focus to private cloud and IT consumerization, developing different solutions for enterprises to manage their virtual environments and delivering services to end users, Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek said on Feb. 15 at a Goldman Sachs investment conference in San Francisco.

About 50 percent of corporate computing workload has now been virtualized. This is a first step by many companies towards cloud computing, allowing companies to store data and workload virtually rather than on a physical computer. Experts say that although the industry may continue to see a virtualization focus in 2012, cloud computing will be built on top of that as the next big trend in the coming years…

Grazed from CRN.  Author:  Chad Berndtson.

Avaya this week confirmed a strategic alliance with Level 3 Communications and a number of new cloud-based services, both part of an emerging cloud computing strategy Avaya is calling Collaborative Cloud.

Part of the launch is a suite of public cloud-delivered communications services called AvayaLive, along with the use of Avaya’s Virtual Network Architecture (VENA) and its virtualized communications platform, Aura, as part of a framework for that Collaborative Cloud…

Grazed from MSPNews.  Author: Kerry Doyle.

One aspect of adopting the cloud is learning that you have to trust the cloud with your data. This can be a big step, but seems to be one that more customers are comfortable with. Many organizations already trust all of their communications and documents to cloud-y offerings. Cloud computing is a revolutionary style of computing that is emerging from evolutionary change. There are a number of trends that are converging to further fuel the cloud computing phenomenon.

Cloud computing sets the stage for a new approach to IT that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models. The emergence of cloud computing enables composite applications and composite businesses, and has already had a profound impact on IT and business. Recently, Morris Communications, LLC., and NIIT Media Technologies (NMT) announced the selection of xStream. Virtustream’s enterprise cloud platform will be implemented for Morris’s SAP (News – Alert) environment and supporting infrastructure in order to offer cloud-based IT services to media clients…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Mark Kakanovich.

Much ink has been spilled on the huge leaps in communications, social networking, and commerce that have resulted from impressive gains in IT and processing power over the last 30 years. However, relatively little has been said about how computing power is about to impact our lives in the biggest way yet: Health. Two things are happening in parallel: technology to collect biological data is taking off and computing is becoming massively scalable. The combination of the two is about to revolutionize health care…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babcock.

Equinix, which supplies data center facilities around the world, has started offering enterprises the option of establishing private cloud operations in two of its facilities.

The large Equinix facilities in Secaucus, N.J., outside New York City, and Chicago will give customers the option of installing their server racks, then managing them as private infrastructure-as-a-service operations under Tier3 enabling software, Enterprise Cloud Platform. Tier3 supplies data center operational software that claims 99.999% enterprise application availability in a clustered server setting.

The Secaucus and Chicago centers were the first to get the Enterprise Cloud Platform option because they are close to major financial services centers. Customers typically choose an Equinix facility to be close to both networking and metropolitan business hubs…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Jean-Marc Seguin.

In our last installment on the benefits of private cloud computing, we asked "Where is your team on the road to the private cloud?" and discussed the importance of understanding your private cloud initiatives today and determining how you got there. Once your IT team has determined where it is on the road to the private cloud, you can begin examining areas specific to your virtual infrastructure to ensure that you architect it for success.

These include:

Configuration: When examining the configuration of your virtual infrastructure, it’s important to look at some basic components to make the journey to the private cloud simpler…